Gray Tree Frogs calling at night

Turtles at the NMG on a sunny morning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l6kSJpRbFM&feature=em-upload_owner

On Saturday night may 11 Michael Bradlee and I went to the NBG to see if the Tree Frogs were mating.  The drainage swale had filled up this week with the rains for the first time in a month.  Friday night we heard nothing, but as soon as we got there on the 11th, about 8:10 PM, the sounds were unmistakeable.  I got about 11 minutes of audio (too dark for the visuals to show anything) and I have listened to it.  At the pond it was nearly hypnotic, but on tape does not have the same power.

But all in all a good sign for the project as it means we should have tadpoles soon.  I will check again on rainy nights to see if there is any other mating.  it seems like there were about 10 frogs just from locations around the pond, but really hard to tell.  In the dim light you could see occasionally frogs swimming, or at least the ripples in the water from frogs swimming, but none of it showed up on the video.

After I left the small pond I went to the larger pond and recorded a few bullfrog calls.

May 10,  went to NBG about 7:30 AM.  The tadpole drainage swale filled yesterday in the rains.  Not completely, but pretty well.  Remains to be seen if the Gray Tree Frogs will use it this year.  it is much later than last year’s breeding already as there were tadpoles swimming by this time in 2012.

At the big pond I got my first film of a large bullfrog.  I would like to  see how that looks on  a larger screen.  I also got lots of turtle video and counted the colony.  13, Which is the most I have seen on any day this year.  I also tried to film a swallow flying around, that ought to be ridiculously out of focus and off target but it was just wave the camera in the general direction  of a fast moving target and hope that you caught something occasionally.

My goal for the next week is to put today’s video, especially the turtles, into one two minute video and get it posted.  Means I have to learn how to edit and post.  time for a new skill.

The Prosperity For RI project is heating up, and this week I found articles on the ridiculousness of the business climate game, more folks writing about the end of growth and sustainable prosperity, and some work on true cost accounting and externalities.  I have some serious reading to do over the next few weeks.

The lower Moshassuck has had some interesting wildlife this week.  The Rough winged swallows are swooping, I have seen several (maybe the same one multiple times) schools of some sort of bottom feeding fish, and for the first time ever I saw a Jellyfish in the Moshassuck on thursday May 2.  It was in the stretch of river just north of the Citizens Bank Building.

At the North Burial Ground the turtles are out, saw a Great Blue Heron (got some video) and was told of a coyote sighting.  The drainage pond that normally hosts Gray Tree Frogs is completely dry, so I have no idea if there will be a breeding season.  Just waiting for rain.

Just a quick update on various wildlife sightings in the Moshassuck watershed this spring. 9 turtles at the large pond in the north Burial Ground.  Turtles also seen at Galego Court pond.

Bull frogs seen at large pond in NBG, but no bullfrog tadpoles yet.

Merganser and Black Crowned Night Heron in the river along Canal St, Rough winged swallows just to the north on both sides of Smith St.

One school of fairly large bottom feeders (probably carp) next to Citizens Bank.

The Moshassuck wildlife video project will focus on Gray Tree Frogs but they have not appeared yet.  Have taken video footage of painted turtles, a bit of muskrat footage, and some footage of geese and ducks.  No bullfrog footage yet either.

Ecological healing, Ecological Economics, Economic Justice:  Creating Prosperity for the 99% in Rhode Island

I question the assumption that there will be economic growth and rising wages. We are already into ecological collapse and the path to prosperity is ecological healing and economic justice. If incomes around the global equalize, as they must in a just world, and if we reduce consumption to keep the worst of climate change from happening and restore the forests, we can use less and enjoy community more.

As for healthcare, it is the biggest cause of bankruptcy in the US, and only through single payer can we stop the crazy idea that we should use the medical industrial complex as an engine of economic growth. All that does is make health care unaffordable.  Good sewers and no more toxic chemicals in our food and water will provide for greater community health than the most high tech system money can buy.

The original impetus for this meeting came about when during the 2010 campaign I was at several events you were at and I thought that it would be good to have a conversation with you about my work on prosperity and the ecology /economy interface. It took this long for the follow up.  It is clear the last 50 years have not been the best for the  RI economy using traditional measures.  But it is also clear that the approach to economic development  that has been used the last 50 years is tied to a system that is failing the people of Rhode Island and has been relatively unresponsive to changes in the conditions on planet Earth.  Economic planning is based on the assumption of fast continuous growth forever.  It is my contention that growth is essentially dead in the industrial world, the conditions required for rapid growth do not exist, and that efforts to create rapid economic growth are likely to lead for a further deterioration of the conditions in our communities.  Our communities would be better served by a smart shrinkage of the economy.   It should be noted that nearly all of the low unemployment states are seeing booming employment from industries that contribute to more rapid climate change and the polluting of waters.

In regard to investments for state pension funds, one of your primary responsibilities, there are several points.  There is a growing separation between the things one would do to get higher returns on investments and what is good for the community.  A stock market valuation growing much more rapidly than the employment, and 121% of all the income gain in 2011 going to 1% of the population are merely exclamation points in this long term trend.    Investing in off shoring, investing in businesses cutting corners, investing in the destruction of ecosystems may bring the returns needed to meet investment targets (though those targets have not been met for at least 5 years) but they are not helping Rhode Islanders except for a relatively small group of retirees.  The expected returns are unrealistic except by investing in the most destructive economic practices, such as fracking, and make the overall economic situation in RI worse,  Of special note for environmentalists is that returns on investment faster than the ecosystem can operate always lead to destruction of forests, soils, and fisheries.  The forest in New England grows about 3% a year and cutting it faster than that (which a higher rate of return to investors seems to demand)  depletes the forest, harms the water, increases flooding, destroys fisheries.  Economists do not normally make that connection, but they should,

Investing directly in ecological healing in Rhode Island creates more jobs in Rhode Island with widespread benefits to communities and the economy, and even a lower rate of return on these investments than Wall St offers would provide more of a boost to Rhode Island than a higher rate of return from Wall St.  it is a bit of a different approach to prudent man investing, but in the long run more prudent.

Economic justice, a more equal economy, is inextricably linked to prosperity and ecological health.  Where the people have the right to stop inappropriate development or prevent their poisoning the health and conversely direct what kind of development is appropriate in the community, the prosperity of the community improves.  When communities have no say, when the economy skews toward the rich, when communities are uprooted for private gain and at public cost, communities become less prosperous.  The result of the skewing of the economy is always faster resource depletion, lower incomes, lower public health, shorter lives and less democracy.  The best examples of doing it right are starting to emerge in the tropics, where according to the World Bank,  when communities retain control of their forest the health of the forest is maintained while the lowest income people in the community eat better and have higher incomes than similar communities that lose control of the forest to outside logging interests.

Full cost accounting is the idea of counting all relevant information, not just the flows of money in determining what is going on economically.  Too often we count resource depletion and other damage to our communities as a growth in the economy.  Is repairing hurricane damage really something to be added to the economy, or should it be subtracted from he planetary budget as it furthers resource depletion to have to rebuild stuff that probably was in the wrong place all together, and incurs great societal liabilities if rebuilt .

I am happy to follow up further and provide references.  And I invite you to a conference on October 12 2013  Entitled    ”Ecological Healing, Ecological Economics, Economic Justice:  Creating Prosperity for the 99% in Rhode Island”

Greg Gerritt     Prosperity For RI.com

Writing on a rainy late winter morning.  The days are getting longer, it is light at 6 AM.  This rain will take much of what is left of the snow.  I have been very focused on events and meetings and not done much writing recently.  But I have been pondering what to say to Gina Raimondo at the meeting in 10 days.  I know i can not give her the full force of my assault on Wall St, so I have to be very clear, concise, and laid back that day.

I had a piece of it walking last night, see if I can reconstruct it.  if not today, tomorrow. I have to convey the relationship between the end of growth except for the funny money growth of the 1%, using the statistic from 2011 that the 1% received 121% of the rise in income that year while the rest of us, the 99% on average received 0.4% LESS income. So an investment strategy that focuses on growth like the stock market saw in 2012, about 6% then becomes the target for pension fund investments, investments that make money for the pension fund while at the same time harming the average Rhode Islander and contributing to excessive consumption on planet earth.  That a better strategy might be investing directly in the state in adaptation to climate change such as decentralized power, much more local agriculture.  Maybe in farmland to get new farmers into business.

I think I am going to have just about that much time.  I need to make swift concise points. No more than 5, 3 is better but not enough to make a circle. Can I include the end of growth?  The end of growth for who?  Are we headed for the next bubble? How wasteful are those?   Who benefits from bubbles are the rich. The end of more jobs with this phony growth unless we practice more economic justice and equity.  Can i convey the spirit level stuff about how clear the evidence is that economic inequality is bad for an economy, and really works less well as we approach a steady state and begin the shrinkage.  Can we shrink smart, can we accept interest and return rates at ecological speed.   2%

Can we start to account for ecology and community in our measures, using full cost accounting in our investment policies. Could we do more good here with smaller returns? Improve the situation of our citizenry, improve gross state happiness with a more level economy?  Using ecological healing as a way forward?

Not going to get to all of that.  maybe this week i write one of these  a day.  See how well I can hone the elevator pitch.

I live right off one of the oldest roads in North America.  North Main St was originally the foot path used by the people of the Narragansett nation  traveling  between the confluence of the rivers in what became downtown Providence and the settlement at the falls at Pawtucket.  The reason N Main has been used by people walking the approximately 4 miles from Providence to Pawtucket for so long is  that it takes you out of the Moshassuck valley at a relatively easy place to climb up to the terrace, keeps you out of the swamps and the up and down terrain of what became the North Burial Ground, and then crosses the divide in to the Blackstone watershed at the easiest place to walk over the ridge.  Considering how long people have been walking this trail it is rather ironic and sad that when it snows the route along N Main and at its southern end Canal St is not passable to pedestrians.  The road is plowed, the traffic moves, but long stretches of it are either unshoveled or have their connectivity blocked by mounds of snow at the corners or next to driveways.

For pedestrians throughout Providence and surrounding urban communities the connectivity is broken in the snow due to the accommodations to the cars that are one of the key components in the global weirding bringing us these crazy storms,    It appears the neighborhoods are accessible, with more shoveled sidewalks, more corner cut throughs, and less crowded streets, but the connections between the neighborhoods, and the areas between the neighborhoods and downtown, especially some of bridges over the Interstate which seem to be orphans, are rather weak.  It happens that the overpass on Broad St was shoveled, but then,  and I found this in many places today, when the plows came back to widen the streets, it pushed snow back onto the shoveled out sidewalks.

Being the obligatory walker I know routes that expose me to less traffic, I avoid most of N Main St, traveling up on the hill rather than the old road I can get to downtown in one piece.   But if we are to be a walkable city, we are going to have to strike a new balance between opening the way for cars, and keeping the old trail accessible to people on foot.

When food scrap is buried in a landfill anaerobic bacteria, bacteria that live in places with very little oxygen, break down the food scrap.  In situations where oxygen is abundant a very different set of bacteria break down the food scrap.  When food scrap is digested by bacteria without oxygen the emissions include large quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.  In addition a variety of sulfur compounds are created in the decay process,   These stink, and are responsible for some, but not all,  of the odor issues at the Central Landfill.  RI Resource Recovery Corporation currently uses a methane recovery system in the landfill, selling the methane to an electric power plant, but the overall efficiency of methane capture is estimated at 50%. An alternative to burying the food scrap and recovering the methane is the building of large scale anaerobic digesters to create and capture methane.  These systems are much more efficient than burying and recapturing, dramatically reduce methane emissions and allow the residue to be used for fertilizer or feedstock  for aerobic composting.

Mr Sachs still seems to believe in the growth fairy. Developing world economies are going to grow for a while longer, but in the west, fast growth is over, and there is no real growth, just more funny money in the hands of the 1%.

Our crisis is not just ecological. It is also one of inequality. Evidence is very clear, inequality torpedoes economies as well as ecological collapse. We are in a crisis that only more democracy can heal. We can use less and share more only if the power of the 1% is checked by the community. We can not have industries blackmail a community with the old song and dance you shall have jobs if we can poison you. Communities must always have the right to say no to inappropriate development and yes to community investment.

Human beings already use way too much of the earth’s productivity to keep ecosystems healthy, we are living off the capital, not the yearly productivity of the earth. When the primary forests are completely gone, when the rural people have all been displaced, growth will be gone for everyone, not just those in the west where growth has already disappeared.

I ponder all the time whether there is a physical solution, or if changes in human consciousness about our place in the universe must come first. All I do know is that we must not do smart growth, but smart shrinkage in my neighborhood if we want to end hunger.

This morning I was listening to the radio and heard a commentary on the RI economy by Scott Mackay.  Mackay was spouting the usual propaganda offered to us by the ruling class.  We have to cut taxes and get folks working again.  Excuse me, but we have heard this before and it still does not work.

The conventional wisdom, the dominant paradigm,, the only ideas acceptable in the public square or in the commercial media are that if we could only make the world safer for the 1% we could have good times (fast economic growth) in Rhode Island and that the biggest problem that RI has is that it does not kow tow to the 1% enough because the unions will not let the corparados screw the workers.  Scott, I expect better of you, some real analysis and some real inquiry into the causes of our economic situation.

We need to ask a few new questions and have a different discussion this year.  Since we are already talking about the 1% and the 99%, we could talk about how the 99% have done under the corporate reign that began with Reagan in the 1980′s versus how the 1% has done.  There is NOTHING in the actions of workers since that time that in any way compares to the harm done to the American economy that the 1% has caused simply through rigging the system so that they get all the new wealth and everyone else gets poorer.   That is prosperity?

Would you at least ask the question about the role increasing inequality plays in messing up economies?  More and more authors are pointing out how inequality in the economy drives the growth out. Have you read any of that material?  They make a pretty convincing case that only when there is actual community participation in decisions on the economy can you achieve a sustainable prosperity in the age of climate change.

Have you tried to apply this new understanding of the role of inequality in gumming  up an economy to the standard wisdom being spouted in Rhode Island for the umpteeth time?  Have you asked how any of the proposals from the chamber of commerce, the various foundations and commissions, from the RIEDC or legislature will decrease inequality?  Or is it because no one wants to know the real answer, the one that says all of the ruling class ideas on how to fix the economy are based on a planet that no longer exists, in which true democracy is just an obstacle to prosperity.  Which Congress have you been watching for just how crazed the 1% and their lap dogs are?

Some more basic truths need to be applied to the conventional wisdom in RI.  The conventional wisdom says decrease regulations (I talked of taxes indirectly  in the previous paragraphs and will not repeat that case here).  but this morning, very close in time to your commentary there was a discussion of just how bad the air pollution in China is right now.  It is a true killer smog.  Just like places in the US got 50 years ago that caused us to try to get out of the stone age of regulations in which the rich could do anything and won every court case.  We made great progress, with cleaner technologies almost always providing for more efficient industrial processes and better profits, but to this day the loonies on the right demand less regulation and more right to pollute, destroy wetlands, over fish, and destroy the climate.  That gives us a country like China in which a small elite make the rules, they apply them selectively, and while the resistance to the rich grows every larger, the growth that the leaders crave gets eaten up  fixing the problems the over development is causing.  China may be eating up to 50% of its growth dealing with the damage each year.  Is your goal to return RI to that condition in pursuit of growth?

The road to prosperity does not pass through lower corporate taxes and deregulation, as much as I, like everyone in Rhode Island knows of rules and laws that just plain are hard to navigate and make life a bit crazy for innovators.  The road to prosperity begins with understanding that economic growth is essentially over in the west.  It is more than likely that wages in the west will start to settle down towards the global mean while incomes in the poorest parts of the world continue to rise, a bit.  We now have jobless recoveries in between bubbles.  Workers are obsolete, even college educated young people can not find jobs and are likely to be only loosely attached to the conventional job market for many years to come.

If we have jobless, bubble growth, is it actually growth?  But this is the only thing offered to us by the conventional wisdom.  So let us start to try to figure out how to create jobs even as the economy shrinks.  Two related places to start, ecological healing and food security. Which are completely integrated into the work to slow and adapt to climate change.

in other words building community resilience, growing more food, using less energy, recycling everything, is not to be the fringe or frill on the economy, it is the main course.  If Rhode Island wants prosperous communities, the only smart thing is to begin the process of ecological healing, restoring forests, soils, fisheries, watersheds, and clean transportation infrastructure.

The conventional wisdom will not get us there.  The conventional wisdom calls for austerity, deregulation, lower taxes on the rich.  Can someone tell me how that slows climate change and helps us adapt?  Can someone tell me how that does not lead to ever faster destruction of the ecosystems that feed us?   Can someone tell me how it reduces inequality in the community and allows communities to protect themselves from corporate greed and power?

Scott, I am waiting for a better analysis, one that actually asks the important questions rather than parroting the received wisdom. .

Greg Gerritt  1/1/13

Had a very interesting morning, reading about the next economy and walking in the woods along the Seekonk.

The reading was a mixed bag.  Some articles in the book “The Coming Transformation” edited by Kellart and Speth, an editorial in the Projo based on its long  series of articles on the economy (continuing its prescription that will not fly), and my weekly dose of ecoRI news, with reports on the Green economy and smart growth.

The trip to the river was excellent.  The mix of sun and clouds as the sun rose in the east, an eagle and a set of coyote tracks going along the same trail I was using.  In the three days since the snow the lone coyote track was the only thing on that trail.  It occurred to me that it might be nice for someone else to see the coyote trail so I tried not to step on it, but it was difficult. The trail, which I know quite well, is relatively broad, but it only has one good track for traveling the side hill.  The coyote was in that one track, so if I wanted to avoid the footprints, I had to walk off the real track, and it was clearly noticeable, I was just a bit off balance the whole time.

The eagle needs comment only because this year you see one nearly every day along the Seekonk, whereas when I moved to town 16 years ago I did not see any in this spot for several years.  Over the last 15 years they have become more and more common along the Seekonk, with at least 3 seen regularly this winter.

Getting back to following the trail, the coyote and I both followed a trail that was shaped by the contours of the hill (as modified by the trail maker).  The economic trail the Projo offers us ignores the contours of the land, offering us a vision of what the 1% would have us do to enrich them.  The environment, poverty, people, irrelevant.  We shall replace the people of RI with some mythological ready for business automatons that shall lets us pollute and steal to our hearts content.  They never explain how this benefits anyone other than the 1%.  They have been saying the same thing for at least 50 years, low taxes, bust unions and all will be right with the world.  If it worked so good, everyone would have been there years ago. There is no vast left wing conspiracy in the US with enough power to undermine the capitalists if they had anything of value to offer.  The Projo needs to understand that only economies with economic equality as a goal and practice can go forward successfully in the 21st Century.  As long as we try to enrich the rich, the RI economy is going to stay dormant.

Strike two for the Projo, and for all of the other commentators I read, is the continued expectation of economic growth.  If all the growth is pumped up funny money based on treating workers like dirt, financial shenanigans like looting pension funds and tax breaks for the rich, and the destruction of the global forest, can it really be called growth if more and more Rhode Islanders struggle to make ends meet? And the planetary systems are more and more damaged and less and less productive. 93% of the growth in income in the US over the last 5 years has gone to 1% of the population.  Do the math, If the second through the 10th percentiles did just a little better over that time, the other 90% actually lost income.  The economy being offered by the Projo, and the smart growth advocates is guaranteed to fail the community and the planet.  The fiscal cliff is just the latest farce in this tragedy.  There has to be a better way, and there is.

My goal for 2013 is to make sure that in Rhode Island the economic alternative to the global capitalist order that is eating the planet and poisoning the poor gets noticed and becomes more integrated into how we think about the economy and what we do to improve it.  Towards that end there will a conference on October 12 2013 Ecological Healing, Ecological Economics, Economic Justice:  Creating prosperity for the 99% in Rhode Island.  You should all put that in your calendar and make plans to attend.

As I get older I am becoming more familiar with the rhythms of the Solar System, the Earth around the sun, the moon around the earth and sun, and the other visible planets.  I am no expert, but have learned to find the plane of the ecliptic and more readily find planets.  I have learned to tell time by moon as well as the sun.

The last few years I have been frequently checking on both day length and the amount of daily change in day length.  One of the more interesting ways to ponder this is to note that every spot on earth gets exactly the same number of hours that the sun is above the horizon over the course of the year.  Every place on earth averages a 12 hour day, if you measured from sunrise to sunset and added them all up over the year.  At the North and South Poles there is 6 months of day and 6 months of night.  At the equator every day is 12 hours from sunrise to sunset.  It then follows that at 45 degrees north and south the longest day would be 16 hours and the shortest 8, give or take a few seconds as the world is not a perfect sphere.

Providence is at approximately 41 degrees North and has a shortest day length of 9 hours and 8 minutes and a longest day length of 14 hours and 52 minutes.  At the solstices day length changes by less then a second, 3 seconds the day before and after, 5 seconds the day before or after that, rising to 2 minutes and 48 seconds at the equinox and the days surrounding it.  For comparison I looked at the change in day length in Barrow Alaska in northern Alaska, and at the equinox day length was changing by 6 minutes and 47 seconds each day.

Makes sense as if day length is going to go from 1 hour to 23 hours in the same amount of time as day length in Providence goes from 9 hours to 15  the change each day is going to be much larger at the equinoxes than it is here, remembering that at the solstices everybody has a length change of zero.

One great thing about this is you only have to learn the numbers once.  They never change.  Next year, 15 years from now, 15000 years ago, day length at the winter solstice in Providence or what was the land upon which Providence was later planted was and will continue to be 9 hours and 8 minutes.  There are things that can change our relationship to the sun, but other than putting a motor on the planet and rocketing it to another part of the solar system, none of them can be changed by people.

I wish the same could be said about the climate. But clearly what we people have done is set the world on fire.  It is not going to be pretty, but there is much we can do to ameliorate the situation if we decide to.  I hope that learning about the sun, the planets, the moon, the tides, and closer to home the living world, will help us think more clearly about climate and what would be good courses of action.  I hope learning to look at the world, to observe, to measure, to analyze, but also to dream and imagine based on what we see will help us be more prepared for the coming storm.

Today the day length in Providence is 9 hours and 8 minutes, but tomorrow it will be 9 hours and 9 minutes, and it will be more than 20 seconds longer than the day before.  Summer is coming.

I am preparing to give a short briefing to the staff of a public official.  Here is what i intend to talk about and to leave behind for sharing with their boss.

2 major topics  the economy and solid waste/compost

The economy:

The framing of the economy in the debate about how to create prosperity in our communities is one of the biggest obstacles to prosperity in RI.  As long as the debate is about how best to kowtow to the 1%,  the 1% will make out like bandits, while the rest of us, and the public infrastructure and our democracy, wither on the vine.

The evidence is becoming quite noticeable that economies that are more unequal work very poorly and inefficiently.  Everything we do to kow tow to the 1%, tax breaks, subsidies, tax policies, trade policies, military adventurism, hurts our communities.  Low taxes for the rich serves no good public purpose.

We have to think very carefully about the conditions for growth in modern economies.  Rhode Island does not meet any of those characteristics.  efforts to create faster growth therefore backfire, creating more inequality and slowing growth.  There is no room here to explain, but I would be happy to either by directing you to other writings or specifically setting up a time to talk about that.

Rhode Island will only get to a more equal economy if we practice economic democracy.  Communities have a right to determine what is not appropriate for our communities.  We give this option to towns about casinos, but not really much else.  We end up getting poisoned and with less prosperity.

38 Studios was a failure to practice democracy.  Compare and contrast to the stakeholder process on the Quonset container port.  The entire leadership of the state was on board screaming this is nirvana.   The public hearings demonstrated exactly how not true that was, and we made it obvious that the 2 con men had conned everyone except the public.  Based on conversations I had with some prominent RI business people and thinkers, public hearings would have exposed how bad a deal 38 Studios was.

In addition to the requirement of economic justice, prosperity in RI will not come about without ecological healing.  Not just in one area, but in many including climate, oceans, fisheries, biodiversity, soils, agriculture, and forests and retreating from the coastline.  Dismantling environmental protections or making it easier for businesses to do the wrong thing harms the economy, not helps it.  Claiming environmental regulations hurt business is old hat, and totally not true.

Solid Waste and Compost

RI should seek to become a zero waste state.  This will enable us to capture much more value out of the resources we already use.  And create more jobs while reducing our carbon footprint. If you are creating commissions to look at trash issues, a comprehensive approach is going to give us much more value for our efforts.

A big part of zero waste is compost.  We have to get the food scrap out of the waste stream so it can be used to grow more food.  Climate change and other factors are going to create a much less food secure RI unless we grow a lot more food here. And that does not happen without compost from food scrap.

RI needs to raise tip fees.  As long as it is dirt cheap to throw stuff in the dump, our communities will demand to do just that.  We can not raise tip fees without a comprehensive approach that creates clear community benefits.

Today on the news I heard that RI state pension funds had a return on investment of 1.5% in the last fiscal year.  Grew right along with the growth of the economy for the 1%.  Rest of us fell further behind.   But what the pension fund really fell behind on was its expected growth, the growth that allows the fund to make payments to retirees. The official expectation for the pension fund is growth of 7.5% each year.  This is recent as previously the rate of return expected had been close to 8%.  In either case the actual return was only 1/5 of the expected return.  Adding to a long string of years in which growth targets were missed by a wide margin.

In a place without an out of control ruling class seeking new ways to loot the populace, the state would tax the wealthy to make up the difference in the pension funds because there is a clear understanding that equalizing the wealth strengthens the economy.

But even that will not really solve the problem that the pension funds are going to get smaller and smaller returns over time.  Not due to mismanagement, but because the economy is going to get smaller.  The stringing out of the recovery after the bubble burst being only the latest and most abundant clue that we have essentially reached the end of economic growth in the west, especially any growth that actually flows into the hands of the 99%.  There are many levers that can be pushed to create more economic growth, but the one thing economic growth is unable to survive is ecological collapse.  The loss of soils, clean water, forests, fisheries, and biodiversity, combined with the fires, droughts, floods, and heat waves of climate change is eating up all the actual growth and many people are ending up poorer even if a few in the cities are getting richer.

This is why over the last 15 years the west has either been in the midst of some bubble or in recession. We have gone from HI Tech and internet, to Housing and strange financial instruments as the bubble we obsess over, but the results are the same.  A small class makes out, everyone else falls behind, and the Earth becomes a less hospitable place with diminished life.

Rhode Island’s pension fund is hurting even with the current “fix” and the economic shenanigans used to grow the economy faster are a disaster (remember 38 Studios).  Rhode Island needs a new course, based on ecological healing and economic justice if it is going to have prosperity.

The President and the Congress suffer from an extremely virulent form of Potomac Fever.  It seems to strike many who go to Washington to hold power.  Unfortunately Potomac Fever is a disease that only kills those who do not have it.  The uninfected it kills by the millions, while the biggest bubble on earth insulates the Washington elite from dying of the Potomac Fever they rain down on the rest of us.

Rhode island voters normally approve bond issues for infrastructure, schools, and protecting the environment (broadly defined).  2012 was no exception.  The legislature had to be dragged kicking and screaming to put the bond issues on the ballot, the people approved them overwhelmingly.

There are many reasons for the people being ahead of the legislature on this.  The primary reason is that most of us never have our ears twisted by millionaires promising re-election if they just cut services more and lower taxes.  Out here where most of us live it becomes more obvious daily that good public services, good schools and well thought out transportation systems for example as well as robust emergency systems, make a huge difference in the health and prosperity of the community, and we have seen little evidence that privatizing all services will save us money or improve service.  All it will do is undercut the middle class.  We have also figured out that the health of the ecosystem and the natural and agricultural areas around us makes a huge difference in our lives, and the prosperity of our communities.

So the people voted quite strongly for better infrastructure and a healthier environment, for investing in the future.  Hopefully the legislature has learned a bit, and figures out the next budget crunch needs to be balanced on the backs of the wealthy not on the rest of us.

Further buttressing the argument is the recent work noting that economies with less economic inequality work better.  Demand and supply are more predictable, and much less money is hoarded.  Money stays circulating in the community longer as well.

Come to the conference on October 12 2013 Ecological Healing, Environmental Justice, and Prosperity for RI communities.  Registration will open soon.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are prepared for the changes that climate change is bringing. They are unprepared for shrinking the military, making healthcare truly affordable and based on prevention, and building resilience and self reliance in our communities as the road to prosperity. Both parties set us up for a failed economy because they think growth is essential, while the planet tells us that smaller and more equal is going to work better

The 16th Annual Buy Nothing Day Winter Coat Exchange

Friday November 23, 2012

If you have a coat to give, please drop it off.
 If you need a coat, please pick one up.
 

Rhode Island sites and their specific activities and times

Providence  State House Lawn  brick patio across from the mall

Collection and give away   November 23 10 AM to 2 PM

Rain location  Gloria Dei Lutheran Church  15 Hayes Street  Providence

Contacts Greg Gerritt: 331-0529; gerritt@mindspring.com;

Phil Edmonds: 461-3683; philwhistle@gmail.com


Pawtucket –  175 Main St   Blackstone Valley Visitors Center

Coats accepted at the visitors center and many other locations in Pawtucket  all through November during business hours.

Collection at November Winters Farmers Markets Wednesday evening and Saturday morning at Hope Artiste Village

Coats given away Friday  Nov. 23  10AM  -2PM

Contact  Arthur Pitt 724-8915; kingarthur02940@yahoo.com   http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/NAP-_Neighborhood_Alliance_of_Pawtucket/home

Newport – St Paul’s Church United Methodist Church

12 West Marlborough St.

Coats collected and given away Friday November 23 10 AM to Noon  Coats Collected Sunday mornings  in November at the church.

Contact Maggie Bulmer 849-3537.

Wakefield –St. Francis Church, 114 High Street,
Coats collected and given away 10AM to Noon

Contact Tom Abbott 364-0778

East Providence  Breed Hall  610 Waterman Ave

(EP Senior Center Complex)  Coats collected and given away Friday November 23  9 Am to 1 PM  Coats collected throughout November at various locations in East Providence and Seekonk including the Newman YMCA.

Contact  David or Lisa Spencer  401-965-9099    Dspencer@atlanticpaper.com

Bristol Elks Lodge  1 Constitution St

Coats Collected throughout November  Coats given away Friday November 23  10 AM – 2 PM

Contact Connie Ganley  mcganley@comcast.net  508-837-0467

YMCA of Greater Providence

2012 Winter Coat Exchange Drop-Off/Pick-Up Sites

Drop-Off Collection    November 1 – 22

Pick Up     November 23              10:00 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Cranston YMCA                    Kent County YMCA

1225 Park Avenue           900 Centerville Road

Cranston, RI 02910        Warwick RI 02886

401-943-0444                 401-828-0130

West Bay Family YMCA

7540 Post Road

North Kingstown RI 02852

401-295-6501

Drop Off coats at the Y November 1 – 22 to be distributed at other sites on November 23

East Side/Mt Hope YMCA                   YMCA of Greater Providence Association Office              Providence Youth Services

438 Hope Street                                  371 Pine Street

Providence, RI 02906                            Providence, RI 02903

401-521-0155                                     401-456-0604

Drop off locations, with coats distributed at other Coat Exchange sites

Newman YMCA                                South County YMCA

472 Taunton Avenue                             165 Broad Rock Road

Seekonk, MA 02771                               Peacedale RI

508-336-7103                                        401-783-3900

There is good evidence that the US economy is coming to the end of growth.  For most Americans incomes have been dropping for 30 years, and all the recent growth periods were simply economic bubbles, with housing being the final one that tipped the applecart big time.  But we still need prosperous communities.  What is your plan for full employment in Rhode Island as the size of the monetary economy diminishes, and how will you keep a full suite of governmental services, something more critical for managing such dangerous transitions?

There are probably no good political answers for this, especially given the American predilection to only elect people who tell us good news.  We are among the most good times craving people in the world, and therefore very prone to a swinging gate in politics, with neither party able to effectively govern when things go wrong.  Our parties are poor at middle ground, but even weaker at realizing something other than the deficit has gone over the edge.

Manifest Destiny continues to define our approach to economics, and especially our view of the ecology/economy interface.  While we have many conservationists there is continuing pressure to allow more and more resources to be used up faster and faster on the grounds that it produces a few jobs, but mostly because it makes a few fortunes.   Everything is about outsourcing  because those with fortunes no longer want to pay decent wages, so if it is not outsourced to a low wage high pollution place, the workers have been outsourced by machines.

The first thing to understand is that given the state of the world wages in the US will continue to come down, moving towards the global mean.  The speed at which the wages sink is directly correlated with the state of  inequality in America.  If the rules continue to be skewed so that 1% of the population receives 93% of the new wealth, wages will drop very fast.  If we adopt a strong policy of use less, share more, un-American in every way, but critical in the age of climate change and extinctions,  the economy lands much better for most of us.

Another part of use less, share more is interest rates, and the use of credit.  Clearly capitalism could not have evolved without the  extensive use of credit.  It is a major change from what came before, in that it demands a constantly growing economy in order for debts to be repaid.  The immediate result, often the first result since forests and wood products are the building block (literally) of all civilizations, (because of wood’s versatility and properties, and because it can be appropriated as a free good by killing and displacing the the people who live in it) Is to cut down all of the forest.  To this day everywhere economies are seeking to grow swiftly forest people are being displaced to cemeteries if they resist, or shanty towns and slums if they do not.   Cultures often crash after the forest is gone because they lose their soil and water.

Given this incredible reliance on forests (try imagining your community without wood products or the flood control that forests do) One would think that the first rule of keeping communities healthy would be do not cut the forest faster than it grows.  This would mean that loans for businesses that work in the wood and wood using industries can not be expected to pay more than about 2% interest if they are to leave healthier forests than they found via management and wood removals.  In other words a 2% return on investment is all that is proper in places like New England given that in a very good year a New England forest will increase in woody biomass by about 3% and our depleted forests need rebuilding

Fisheries and other animal based systems can stand higher harvest rates, but soils and  substrates build even slower than forest biomass, turning farming and fishing into soil and ocean bottom mining rather than sustainable activities if they are harvesting too much.  Farming must become about building soil if it is to feed 9 billion of us each year.  That says 2% loans, 2% return on investment is all that can be produced while healing the ecosystems.

Another factor to consider is that using fossil fuels to work the land constantly displaces people while contributing to greenhouse gas emissions that threaten the food supply and forest health.  I often say, only a bit in jest, that there is enough oil on the planet to destroy all of the forest.   People can work the land much more lightly than machines, and are able to build soil much more effectively without large machines.  Or cut more selectively or fish less intensively.  A factory trawler tries to catch everything.  Catching with rod reel or similar technologies leaves fish behind to breed.  And takes more people rather than investments in technology.

Which gets us back to how are we going to create more jobs as the economy shrinks.  We are going to have more farmers, fishers, and forest workers using less technology and paying a lot more attention to the health of the ecosystem they are working in.

Yes, I am aware of the idea that working the land will never pay the wages that a modern economy pays, but the reality is that planet Earth can not pay them either, so we have an plan that fits the reality of a diminished capacity on planet earth.

As to how we maintain government services under such dire circumstances, we need to figure out what our communities really need.  And the first thing we do NOT need is the war machine.  Start by reducing military spending by 10% each year.  Take half of that and spend it on education for people of all ages,  research, development and implementation of clean energy and working the land and oceans properly, and rebuilding infrastructure for the 21st century.  This then allows us to massively shrink the prison industrial complex, again diverting the money to maternal and child health, good food for all, and healthy housing.  Finally, tax the rich, tax speculative investments, tax carbon emissions, and take sufficient royalties for the community for the use of the commons and for patenting things developed from living things to support critical services including preparing our lowest income communities for climate change by building up their resilience.

What role does economic inequality play in the overall health of the economy?

Evidence is pouring in that the more inequality in an economy the less well it functions.  Too many stick points for markets to work efficiently, too poor a distribution of resources, which creates a need for additional services, either health and education or police and prisons.  With a higher percentage of our population in poverty, prison, and ill than almost any other industrialized nation, clearly we have chosen poorly by increasing inequality.  Often writers on the topic such as Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz think that if we can reduce inequality we can get the economy growing again.  I disagree, the economy is not going to grow, but clearly reducing inequality will make the economy function much better.

All politicians know a bit of math, and if I said to you that a community was spending 135% of its income each year, you would likely be looking at a community with a massive debt problem.   Now consider the Earth.  People are using 135% of the biological productivity of the planet each year.  And just as towns, families, businesses hemorrhage money if expenses are 135% of income, the Earth is losing forests, soils, fisheries, wildlife, clean water at a rate that is only partially covered up by the vastness of the Earth, and shows up every day in the lives of people with less to eat and the loss of the resource base that feeds them and their families.    It is likely that we shall be unable to maintain community prosperity if the resource base is too degraded, so what is your plan to return the health of the ecosystem, in other words reduce the amount people are using until it is below the carrying capacity and the systems can be rebuilt, and how does it fit in with your plan to balance the budget, since ecological disasters will overwhelm any budget you create that harms ecosystems and does not account for the need to heal them in your fiscal expenditures.

While politicians are apoplectic about the budget deficit, they seem almost completely undeterred by the ecological deficit our economy is running.  Unfortunately ecological deficits are more likely to cause collapse than budget deficits.  Politicians have gotten so used to be bailed out and supported by the huge storehouse of planet Earth that they forget how much conditions have changed in the last 65 years.    Population has tripled and the amount of stuff used per person has increased even more,so our ecological footprint has skyrocketed beyond all reason or ability of the Earth to stay healthy.

Politicians always assume a growing economy will help them balance the budget, but in our case the more we try to grow, the further behind we fall.  Therefore the only things that will balance the budget are spending less on things that harm us and taxing the things that harm us and the rich at higher rates.  Prime places to reduce spending include the police/prison industrial complex, payments to insurance companies (which can be replaced by a less expensive health care system based on prevention)  and subsidies to industries that increase inequality in the economy.  Taxes on the income of the wealthy, capital gains, and speculation should all be increased. Taxes on carbon should be implemented,

A response to an article by Calebo Jacob

I am less and less enamored with the idea that western civilization has something special to offer humanity.  I support reading great literature, have read a good sprinkling of it, but the perspective of the civilization that has driven the global ecosystem off the cliff with its greed and demand for more does not uniquely hold wisdom that automatically is useful to salvaging the cascading disasters on planet earth.  Many other cultures hold wisdom that the west ought to learn from equally.  Western imperialism is a fact on the ground, but that does not make it a good thing for the mind.

I came up with the first question for the SNA candidates forum.

There is good evidence that the US economy is coming to the end of growth.  For most Americans incomes have been dropping for 30 years, and all the growth periods were simply economic bubbles, with housing being the final one that tipped the applecart big time.  But we still need prosperous communities.  What is your plan for full employment in Rhode Island as the size of the monetary economy diminishes, and how will you keep a full suite of governmental services, something more critical for managing such dangerous transitions?

Then when i started to post here I realized it would be fund to think of a few more.  So here goes.

What role does economic inequality play in the overall health of the economy?

All politicians know a bit of math, and if I said to you that a community was spending 135% of its income each year, you would likely be looking at a community with a massive debt problem.   Now consider the Earth.  People are using 135% of the biological productivity of the planet each year.  And just as towns, families, businesses hemorrhage money if expenses are 135% of income, the Earth is losing forests, soils, fisheries, wildlife, clean water at a rate that is only partially covered by the vastness of the Earth, and shows up every day in the lives of people with less to eat and the loss of the resource base that feeds them and their families.    It is likely that we shall be unable to maintain community prosperity if the resource base is too degraded, so what is your plan to return the health of the ecosystem, in other words reduce the amount people are using until it is below the carrying capacity and the systems can be rebuilt, and how does it fit in with your plan to balance the budget, since ecological disasters will overwhelm any budget you create that harms ecosystems and does not account for the need to heal them in your fiscal expenditures.

There are no more bullfrogs sitting along the edge of the pond in the NBG.  Seems like its been cool enough that they have gone into hibernation.

Today at noon time the river was teeming with fish.  From north of Citizens Bank to north of Smith St.  not only huge schools of little menhaden, but the first schools I have seen of larger sized fish.  I did see the night heron catch a larger fish yesterday, and several of the menhaden had fresh cuts like the birds tried to catch them and they got away.

Today I saw huge schools of menhaden by the Smith St and broken wooden bridges along
Canal St and the Great Blue Heron that has been hanging out between the bridges took a poop that crated a white circle in the water 18 inches in diameter.  Watcvhing it come out was amazing just one giant whoosh.

In the NBG I saw tadpoles in the4 big pond for the first time since late June.  i have been wondering where the new crop is, and saw a number of them today.  The murky water makes observation difficult this time of year, so it was interesting that today was the day to see them.

It’s mid September and the menhaden are back in the lower Moshassuck.  If the conditions are right, sun, rain, tide, temperature, then you can see thousands of small, 2 to 3 inch menhaden in schools in the river along Canal street.  The menhaden excursion to downtown in September is something I have been watching since I moved to Providence in 1996.

It varies every year. Including when it arrives.  This year is dominated by small fish.  Their big sisters are around as I saw them in the Seekonk River today making some very sizable splashes.  Several years ago the big ones came to downtown in huge numbers, estimated at 10,000 fish, and stayed for two months.  For years the only ones i saw very small ones, first year mostly,  But three times in the last 8 years large ones dominated.  And some years you hardly see a one. Hopefully the days of none are behind us.  The fish bring much to the urban core.

The places to see them are in the canal immediately north of the Citizens Bank building, going up Canal street.  Especially fruitful has been the pool immediately north of bridge spanning  the river at Park Row.  Several times this summer a 40 inch eel was seen in the pool, but at shallow water the menhaden stand out against the wall in the middle of the river.  Crabs are also a daily siting.

I wandered along the Woonasquatucket River this week as well and found an abundance of menhaden along the Promenade.  I am a bit jealous of my friends at the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council their river is bigger and gets a lot more fish.  The herring runs of spring are even more of a sign of ecological healing in the Woonie despite the superfund site.

Maybe that makes the sitings in the mighty Mo’s estuary more of an enjoyment. They are harder to come by.

My favorite accompaniment to the menhaden run is found below the collapsing bridge below the Statehouse on Canal St.  The broken bridge holds up a large pile of woody and trashy debris, with its bones being trees that have floated down the river.  The pieces change, but the overall structure is pretty stable and survives floods.  The bridge may not survive many more big storms.  But until it washes out to sea the herons, Great Blue and Night will use it for refuge and hunting.  This morning i saw the Night Heron nab a little fish and swallow hard.  Yesterday it was a young Great Blue that I greeted on my way to the office.  Often the taxi drivers who wait at the taxi stand along the river on Canal and I converse about the birds and fish we see.  Sometimes we do not share a vocal language, but gestures work.

Thats the news from the lower Moshassuck.  I will be checking out the headwaters later in the week, and co leading a hike with The Nature Conservancy on September 22, so maybe a headwaters report will follow as well as updates if I see anything interesting at the North Burial Ground or along the tidewater.

Read the rest at

http://prosperityforri.com/38-studios-and-economic-development-in-rhode-island/

or just click on 38 studios in the pages column to the right

This week’s observations at the NBG.

The little pond is much smaller due to the dry weather, and the rain friday night did not enlarge it.  The arrowroot(I think) (the emergent plant with purple fllowers in a spike) makes it very difficult to see more than a few feet from shore, so hard to know what is going on, but in the one area that I can still see into the  water there are only a few tadpoles left, and these have lightened in color and developed legs.  Looks like this latest hatching class will be gone very soon, joining their conspecifics in the woods.    Yesterday I thought I saw a bullfrog tadpole, and the bullfrogs are still around, but again, with limited visibility it is hard to know.

Plenty of action over at the big pond.  It appears that all of let years tadpoles have now become froths, with hundreds around the edge of the pond.  While I was not watching the number of jumping tadpoles rapidly diminished and the number of frogs on shore expanded.  Looks to be nearly complete, and now in the water you are seeing the much smaller rings and lower jumps of the new crop of tadpoles, probably very similar to the bullfrog tadpoles I saw in the little pond.

I saw two muskrat one day this week, I saw a night heron this morning.  And walking home there were a pair of goldfinch along with the usual assortment of robins, jays, sparrows, flickers, hawks, and doves.

This week the little pond in the NBG is shrinking fast while at the same time every day a new crop of tadpoles comes out of the water as little tree frogs.  It is the second year I have kept track of the timing, and this year the tadpoles are morphing a bit earlier than last year.

On a beautiful June morning I went over to the NBG to check out the life.  On my way in I saw an Oriole.  I think there is a pair in that neighborhood.  At the large pond I counted 14 turtles, which is the highest number I have ever counted there.
Several years ago 6 was the high for the year, last year it was 9.  They line up on the log sunning themselves as the morning starts to get warm.  They range in size from small to large, seemingly 4 or 5 ages classes represented.

The little pond is in full swing with its brief Gray Tree Frog tadpole season, with the first tadpoles appearing May 19, and this week the earliest of the hatchings, (3 or 4 several days apart producing noticeably different size classes) the largest tadpoles have  developed legs.  Tree frog tadpoles tend to either be swiftly on the move, eating, or lying on the bottom sort of dug into the mud.  There are hundreds if not thousands in the pond.

This year I have noticed a second type of tadpole which despite much observation time the previous two years, I had not seen before this year.  I think they are bullfrog tadpoles, as last summer a crop of about 20 bullfrogs came over from the larger pond as part of the new frog dispersal that follows the transformation from tadpole to frog. I know at least a  few of them made it thorough the winter.

The tadpoles are bigger, greener, and have a more transparent tail than do the tree frogs.  What they also do is move quite differently, with today the noticeable habit of hanging out tail down int he water column near the surface and occasionally breaking the surface readily observed.  This is exactly how the big second year tadpoles act in the larger pond, supplemented with large jumps by the big tadpoles.  Like breaching whales in miniature.  The new babies are not jumping yet, but you can see it coming.

I get to the NBG in the dark all winter, but rarely6 when the days are as long as they are now.  But after I got home front he EJ conference I went over to the NBG and just after 9 PM the little pond was loud with the calls of at least 2 different kinds of frogs.  Going ho have to check the recordings of what is what before I can offer identification of the callers.

I went down to the North Burial Ground twice today. It is a beautiful June day, it rained hard yesterday, but sunny and 70 today. At the big pond there were turtles sunning in the morning and we watched the fish. At the little pond I saw my first tadpole with legs.

When i went back this afternoon at the big pond I saw a Great Blue Heron eat two fish, once on my way in, and once on my way back from the little pond.

The little pond had filled back up after yesterday’s rain, and with that the Gray Tree Frog tadpoles were much closer to where you can stand with dry feet, and for some reason there were many more around than I have seen on any day so far this spring. There are still some very little ones, some larger ones, and some that are starting to sprout legs.

I also saw another kind of tadpole, just 3 of them. They were a different color, a lighter gray, with a clear tail, and yellow spots. They also swam differently from the tree frog tadpoles. The pond did have an invasion of Bullfrogs last fall, and they breed later, so it could be bullfrog tadpoles, but I need to do more research.

The other animals of interest today in the NBG included a hawk being chased by little birds, and oriole and a goldfinch.

With the drought this winter the pond where the Tree Frogs breed in the NBG had gone dry.  It was dry most of April, so I was concerned that there would be no breeding season this year.   The pond refilled in late April with the rains, so I was hopeful that it had filled in time.  On May 19 I saw tadpoles.  Last year the tadpoles appeared on May 12,

Sent this as a letter to the editor

To the editor,  I have seen a number of people praise Keith Stokes on his way out of the door at the RI Economic Development Corporation, but I think it bears remembering that 38 Studios is the second major blunder of this sort in his economic development career.  Mr. Stokes was completely taken in by the con men who convinced most of the economic development establishment of Rhode Island that they could be a successful gigantic container port.  Eventually the public won out and the con men were unmasked, but right until the end Mr Stokes was a proponent of their port.

Running an economy on the principle that making the 1% happy will bring prosperity, is preposterous, and links our communities to the vanishing rhinoceros.

18 months ago or so when the RIEDC decided to give $75 million to Studio 38 so it could develop video games in RI instead of MA a number of people in Rhode Island, myself included , but also many people with extensive business experience, noted that this was a poor choice for the state.  the reasons people objected were varied.  In my case it is because I do not believe the video game industry is ever a good bet.  Other people objected to the state of RI doing anything that smacked of having an industrial policy.

I tend to be a believer in industrial policy, that the state should be making a smart use of the people’s money, and helping industries that will help the state in its development and job creation, but it is pretty clear that the RIEDC has a very poor track record in this area, and the video game industry is so uncertain that this was a long shot at best.

So it is with a little bit of I told you so, and a whole lot more regret that the state has wasted its money, that I have been reading the headlines and stories this week about the uncertain future and financial picture of 38 Studios.   This fiasco will give industrial policy a bad name when it should be another nail in the coffin of the EDC.  It also reflects rather poorly on Curt Schilling, the right winger who hypocritically took money from the state and squandered it. I would say he should have stuck to pitching but he was done with that by the time he took up video games.

Not coincidentally the larger the inequality in the society,                  the more damaging the environmental ethics pursued.            Healing ecosystems, real democracy, an equitable income distribution, non violence, are all connected.

Greg Gerritt • I read Limits to Growth as a young person in the 1970′s, and loved reading Donella Meadows’ columns in the 1990s. This summation is a good reminder that we are in overshoot (using 140% of the annual biological production each year, which shows up as eroded soils, diminished forests, and empty seas among others, and 392 ppm CO2 and the warmest March ever) and that no one really knows where along the curve we are. Several things I have seen recently say that if anything we are so far into the BAU model that overshoot moves faster than ever and collapse seems more likely. i view my work as an effort to prevent collapse by managing the decline in our footprint, and our greedy ambitions.

What we are also seeing in this overshoot is growth moving around the world and leaving new and different places collapsing in its wake. I happen to live in one of the places where the ecological damage of industrialism started hundreds of years ago. And despite 50 years of effort no one has been able to return Rhode Island to the fast growth track.

I remind them that maybe we need another approach, based on the managed decline (not the language I use, but exactly the language of Limits to Growth, so i use it here) if we are to have prosperous communities.

I am getting an EPA award tomorrow for my work in developing a compost industry, To me my work with compost has always been about making sure we can grow food in the neighborhood when the trucks from California can no longer feed us. I do not think the EPA wants to really recognize the latter part of the previous sentence, but it motivates me and feeds more into the idea of ecological healing as the only way forward.

Seeing the video on the Limits to Growth revisited, is just a reminder that my job continues to be staying just a bit ahead of the curve on what folks are talking about so that next year it can be what they are talking about. and some years later is old hat to everyone.

As we say, the hippies were right about everything.